Now I understand what Occupy Wall Street's problem is. It isn't their message.

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Now I understand what Occupy Wall Street's problem is. It isn't their message.

In Europe, laid-off Sony workers in France held the French branch's CEO hostage in response to the layoffs. France had some large scale protests over Sarkozy's austerity program. The cops tried to smack down the protests and they exploded into riots and then strikes. As of now, Sarkozy has been voted out of office, and the very survival of France's austerity programs is at grave risk.

In Greece, anti-austerity protests broke out. The riot cops came out and tried to handle the protesters and things just got worse. Buildings were set on fire and even the police were caught on camera, on fire because of molotov cocktails. Strikes then followed. What has happened to Greece? The pro-austerity parties have lost power. The future of austerity in Greece is dim, to say the least.

In Libya, Tunisia and Egypt, freedom was gained only by a whole lot of fighting back. The integrity of Egypt's rebellion is at risk primarily because the Egyptian military is kicking ass without repercussions.

In America, nobody fights back beyond standing outside of the halls of the Plutocrats and protesting. Protesters get their asses kicked by the police and things stay the same. A notable exception is Wisconsin, where two major conditions occurred: the protesters numbered over a hundred thousand, and even the police were on the protesters' side. Things would be far worse in Wisconsin now if the public had not seen all those people, in force, with even the police acting like they were itching to join in.

The problem is that people do not respect an organization that never fights back, even in the face of outright brutality and violence. But America stands alone in the world in that when protests are suppressed and they escalate into riots, the public now favors the police. As of late, they favor the police as if they were gods. When the police turn on you, in America, that's a very big nail in the coffin. This is a fairly recent turn of events; police brutality used to earn them a bad reputation; now it's called "getting tough on crime".

So the problem with Occupy is not their message or their behavior. It's that they can't go out and kick ass. Sure, molotov cocktails would not be the way to go in America, but Occupy has other ways to kick ass: such as a concerted effort to deprive the police gangs of funding, which would be about just as devastating. Or bills that would outlaw their brutal actions during protests; or laws that strengthened free speech. Also, time will have to tell if the strikes on May 1 had any noticeable impact. Occupy has to find a way to handcuff the police thugs, ESPECIALLY the 7th largest army in the world, aka Bloomberg's NYPD.